The head of the black cook appears above the hatch-combing, and his mouth
opens wide as he gives the welcome supper call. Down the ladder into the
cuddy they tumble, one and all, and lay-to with an appetite and vigor
which speaks of good digestive organs. Conversation is omitted. Coffee,
pork-and-beans, biscuit,--nectar and ambrosia,--vanish from the tin
dishes, until the cook comes in with the sixth pot of steaming coffee.
At last, when the cook vows the day’s allowance is eaten and the last drop
of coffee is poured, the benches are pushed back, tobacco and pipes are
produced from the sacred recesses of the bunks, and six men are puffing
out the blue smoke as though their lives depended on it.
The schooner rolls to the long ground-swell, her lamp-bracket swinging
through a great arc and casting long, black shadows, monstrous
presentiments of the smokers, which move rapidly from side to side over
the misty beams and bulkheads like gnomes. A concertina, a mouth-organ,
and perhaps a fiddle, are brought out, and a sea-song, an Irish jig,
or something in unspeakable Portuguese, rises above the creaking of the
timbers and the burst of foam alongside.
But the work is not done yet. It is never done. The ship is to be cleaned
down and the gurry-pen and dory are to be sluiced out in readiness for
the morrow. A vigil is to be kept, watch and watch, and woe be to the
youngster who tumbles off his hatchway to the deck from sheer weariness.